gabelle

plural gabelles

1. A tax; especially, the tax on salt levied in pre-Revolutionary France.

   The proceeds of the gabelle on retail wine were pledged directly to repayment of the forced loans imposed during Baumgarten and Sterz's raid in 1364.

   1998, William Caferro, Mercenary Companies and the Decline of Siena, page 150

   1 more example

   Salt, for example, was a state monopoly, and the tax on it – the much-detested gabelle – was levied at six different levels in the various regions […]

   2002, Colin Jones, The Great Nation, Penguin, published 2003, page 143